Waiting for new MacBook Pro Retina or thinking about integrated graphics

Many people know that the World Conference for developers for Apple WWDC 2013 platforms begins on June 10 and, as usual, it opens with a press conference at which the heads of the company share their successes in the previous period and open the veil of secrecy from the upcoming new products.

According to rumors that are not always true, the presentation promises to be rich in interesting devices.

But I would like to tell you in more detail about the issue that personally bothers me most. Will the new 13 "MacBook Pro Retina with a diagonal be presented and how suitable will it be for everyday use with the new graphics processor from Intel.
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Most recently, Intel introduced a new line of processors, codenamed Haswell. I will not talk about them in detail, because it is a completely different story. Let me just say that according to Intel, they are more powerful and consume significantly less energy. What interests me is the graphics core built into the processor called Iris. Intel decided to give the graphics core a new name in order to try to stand on a par with such giants of the graphics processor market as GeForce and Radeon.

Despite the fact that the graphics chip built into the processor improved every year, it still remained not productive enough for most professional users, especially on the latest computers from the Apple MacBook Pro Retina 13 company. "Unlike the older 15" model which has discrete graphics from Nvidia, 13 ", the model has at its disposal only Intel HD Graphics 4000, on which even the interface of the operating system itself at a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels in some situations is rendered with noticeable slowing down, what then to speak about serious graphic packages.

A brief digression describing my situation. I have been using a Mac since 2008, I used most Apple laptops with different graphics chips, currently I’m using an old MacBook Pro 15 "at the beginning of 2008 with the GeForce 8600M GT. I’m professionally doing three-dimensional graphics and graphic design. And now it’s time to upgrade the machine, which with faith and the truth has served me for the last couple of years, since neither the RAM increased to 6 GB nor the fast SSD can make a new one out of the old poppy. After the last price reduction, the retinabuki thought hard about acquiring such a device for themselves. What stops me so far is a weak graphics subsystem.

But enough of the lyrics. That is why I have high hopes for the new Iris chip. According to AnandTech, Intel is going to compete with the Iris chip to compete with the GeForce GT 650M, the one that is now installed in a 15 "retinabuk.

To further separate the line of its graphics solutions, Intel will leave the name HD Graphics for less powerful chips, and the "premium" solutions will be called Iris. I would also like to note that top-end GP3 GPUs that consume 28 watts will be referred to as Intel Iris Graphics 5100, while the top GT3e-level solution will be named Intel Iris Pro Graphics 5200. All of these “GT” are Intel’s own naming system and it is clear only to them and should not be used anywhere.



Iris Pro will be equipped with 128 MB of eDRAM memory, which will achieve more than twofold superiority over the Intel HD 4000. Top-end GPUs will be available only with quad-core processors, which are currently installed by default in 15 "firmware.

The graphics subsystem is likely to become another way for Apple to separate the MacBook Pro lineup from thinner, lighter, and less powerful MacBook Air models. The new Intel processors for ultrabooks, which are usually installed in Air, will not be equipped with Iris-level graphics, they will have a less powerful Intel HD Graphics 5000 chip installed.

According to Intel's own tests, Intel HD Graphics 5000 offers more than 50% performance improvement in relation to Intel HD Graphics 4000, which are installed from last year's Ivy Bridge processors. Therefore, this update may be significant for the MacBook Air line.

Also quite a nice bonus for all users of computers based on Intel processors will be that the Iris graphics come along with all the nice energy-saving bonuses from Haswell, which will give up discrete graphics and further increase battery life.

According to Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI Securities, Apple will start shipping new computers by the end of June 2013. Then it will become clear whether this is really a significant improvement in the development of embedded graphics solutions or just another beautiful, but useless marketing step.

Personally, I have high expectations for this line of processors. I hope that this will be the best balance between performance and battery life to solve my problems. What do you think about this?

Thank you for reading, and I ask you to write all the clarifications and comments in private messages.

Based on Appleinsider.com